John Harrison - Bells and Bell-ringing

Published in Great Britain in 2016 by Shire

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This electronic edition published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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2016 John Harrison.

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Shire Library no. 802. ISBN-13: 978-0-74781-433-7

PDF e-book ISBN: 978-1-78442-090-1

ePub ISBN: 978-1-78442-089-5

John Harrison has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this book.

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COVER IMAGE

Cover design by Peter Ashley. Front cover: Bell sallies at St Michaels, Steventon, Oxfordshire (photograph by Nick Wright).

TITLE PAGE IMAGE

Overhead view of a weekly ringing practice at All Saints, Wokingham.

CONTENTS PAGE IMAGE

The masthead of The Ringing World, the ringing communitys weekly newspaper, which has been providing news, views and information about bells, ringers and ringing since 1911, and is the journal of record for performances.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe a debt to the many ringing historians on whose work I have drawn for this book. I would particularly like to thank Chris Pickford whose help and guidance has proved invaluable. Thank you too to the many fellow ringers and others who have so generously allowed me to use their pictures. Finally, thanks to my wife Anne for proofreading the book and to Helen Craig for reading it from the perspective of non-ringing readers for whom it is mainly written. Any remaining defects are of course mine.

Images are acknowledged as follows:

I would like to thank the following for permission for me to use their pictures:

David Beacham, (left). All other pictures are from the authors collection or are in the public domain.

CONTENTS

BELLS AND BELL-HANGING

Bells are the loudest of musical instruments. They are capable of arousing strong emotions and their sound is deeply rooted in many cultures around the world. In England and some other parts of the English-speaking world the unique sound of English-style ringing, especially change ringing, is embedded in the public consciousness. The bells do not play tunes, nor do they strike randomly as they do in many places. They sound in ordered sequences, which continually change to create a captivating soundscape. This unique style of ringing is made possible by the special way the bells are hung, so let us start by looking at how ringing works.

FULL-CIRCLE RINGING

Bells can be fixed mouth down and struck by a hammer or clapper as they are in clocks and carillons (where the clappers are operated from a clavier), or they can be chimed (swung through a small arc with the clapper swinging inside the bell), but English-style ringing is much more dynamic with the bells swinging full circle mouth up to mouth up. The clapper strikes the bell hard at the end of each swing, alternately on each side. Ringing in this way means that the timing can be controlled very accurately. When the bell is swinging nearly full circle, making it swing a little higher makes it swing more slowly and letting it swing less high makes it swing more quickly. This is what makes it easy to ring bells in orderly sequences, and to vary the order continually the essence of change ringing.